Pameran Poskad

Firstly just a little plug for the book class I'm starting next Saturday. I'll be teaching a four week class from 10.30 am - 1 pm Saturdays May 1 -22. It is at St Stephen's Community Living Centre, 28 Freeman Street, Ringwood East. You can see more and book at their website

http://www.ssclc.websyte.com.au/

The pictures you see here were sent to me Alison in Singapore, they are of my works (among 3000) in the exhibition Pameran Poskad which is on in Singapore until 1 May.

Collographs, Paste paper and classes

Firstly just a little plug for the book class I'm starting next Saturday. I'll be teaching a four week class from 10.30 am - 1 pm Saturdays May 1 -22. It is at St Stephen's Community Living Centre, 28 Freeman Street, Ringwood East. You can see more and book at their website

http://www.ssclc.websyte.com.au/

These are the pieces I submitted to the 69 Smith Street stand at Art Melbourne along with the cormorant picture I've just had framed.

They are Tesselation Part Two cast dyed gingerlily on a lino print. Part of an installation I did for Natural Connections an Exhibition I had with Ann Parry back in 2002.
The next three can be one piece or three separate pieces called Journey - Korea, King Island, Milne Bay and combine pulp painting with digital imagery.


 

Tomorrow I am going to my daughter's school to show her year 12 class some of my artist books and to teach them a couple of binding styles, I decided to give them some paste paper to cover their concertina's with and I had some brownish paper that I didn't have a particular use for so decided to use it for gold paste papers, they are pretty simple just gold acrylic in cornflour paste and a range of tools for the designs.

I've also been playing around with some collographs, I didn't get to the workshop that Liz Winter ran for Papermakers but saw some of the results, I particularily liked the effect of eggshells so was keen to try them out. T'arts was at my place last Sunday so I thought we'd have a go at making some collographs, talk about the blind leading the blind, I hadn't realised the eggshells would be so difficult to stick. The top picture shows the plate I made on Sunday with the print, the next shows an earlier one I'd made and a couple of prints, since the T'arts is a textile group I did one print on one of my calico couching cloths to see how it would work on fabric, was fine, might be interesting with some embroidery/beading.


The third picture is of some extra plates I made from flattened corrugated cardboard, thin card and egg shells this time I took the easy option and used some of my wide double sided tape.

sewing frame and cradle in one

At Yabbers on Wednesday we had a great gathering and tried out my workroom for the first time fitting nine of us in without too much trouble, well it was a bit squeezy if anyone wanted to move around. Tricia had sourced some instructions for making a sewing frame from an encyclopaedia so we started the day by making a frame each. I have just found out that the book it came from was Making & Keeping Creative Journals by Suzanne Tourtillott. It was really quite simple, it just involved cutting a window in the cover of the book and using clamps to hold it open and to hold the cords taut.

 

 

These pictures give you a good idea of how it works though I am getting a bit frustrated with the new editing in the blog, I want to move the pictures around but am having great difficulty so I'll leave them all down the left.

Before you set up your sewing frame you can use it as a cradle for making the holes in your sections which makes this piece of equipment very useful.
Here is the sample book sewn but no covers yet.

After a late lunch we tried out backing silk with paper following the directions given by Dineke McLean at the Papermakers of Victoria meeting last Saturday. Ursula had brought along some pieces of silk that she'd dyed so we tried that out and backed it onto some shoji screen paper that I'd bought on Monday.

The silk is pasted to the paper which was pasted to a sheet of perspex so that it would dry flat, I fully intend trying some more myself but will definitely start small because I suspect it will take a bit of getting used to manouvering the wet paper onto the cloth with only two hands, we had at least four on Wednesday.

I have spent the rest of the week framing up some A2 pulp paintings at Do Your Own Framing. I did their course about five years ago and tend to do most of my framing at home using Ikea frames and cutting my own mounts but these ones were very big so it was much better to do it there and use their equipment and benefit from their expertise. Now I must get back to editing the IAPMA Bulletin.

Edible Books and Easter

Happy Easter All, I hope the bunny brings lots of eggs.

Last Thursday First of April was the Eleventh Edible Books High Tea. I participated in the first and second edible book teas with Papermakers of Victoria but this is the first since 2001. I saw a notice about it Thursday morning and since I was making my annual batch of Middle Eastern Easter cakes (Mamoul) I decided to have a go at making a mamoul book.

I first learned to make mamoul about 20 years ago at a middle Eastern cooking class given by Gamil Abou-Lehaf for CAE. Over the years I have adapted to recipe and have found this to suit me best.

1 kg semolina
1 cup sugar (250 ml)
250g butter (or dairy free spread for vegans) - melted
1.5 cups boiling water (375 ml)
500 g dates
water

Mix semolina with sugar then pour on the melted butter and boiling water, kneed well until the mixture is smooth and all the semolina has been incorporated into the mix. Cover and leave overnight.

Cover the dates with water and cook until soft then mash.
in the morning take walnut sized pies and roll into balls (a bigger piece was required for the 'book') flatten out and put a teaspoon of date in the middle and close the semolina around the date, place on a baking tray. The balls can be placed quite close together they do not expand very much in cooking. Cook for about 20 minutes in a moderate oven until the mamoul just change colour. They can have icing sugar sprinkled on but I don't find that necessary, it makes it look better but messier to eat.


See other peoples edible books here http://www.flickr.com/groups/best-edibles-2010/pool/ and  here
books2eat.com.

Amazon trial

This is the book I used for the Bairnsdale workshop, I am trialling add Amazon links to some of my posts. The instructions are very clear and there are very good templates included in the book too.